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Blanche braced herself more firmly against the entrance to the expansive cave system. Her magic firmly in hand, she nudged the wind buffeting her until it created a shield of sorts. That was child’s play. Now for the tricky part.
Blanche expanded her magic as far as she could and began to raise the temperature. It was a slow process, and not one she was particularly adept at. There was a reason weather mages tended to travel in pairs. And it wasn’t because the conclave preferred it that way. Weather patterns were generally the result of two different temperatures, humidities, and wind directions colliding in specific ways. And weather mages, like every other sort of mage, were better able to wield their magic when they worked with the natural world rather than against it.
Could she brew up a snow storm in the middle of the Baris desert? Certainly. But it would take a whole lot more effort than if she was in the middle of Kozlovka. With two of them working together, however, they would be able to create a snow storm in the height of summer in Baris with significantly less effort.
Blanche tried to raise the temperature high enough to convince the clouds to let loose and drop the precipitation she knew was huddled in their depths, but her magic was spread too thin, so she slowly reduced the area she was trying to affect.
Slowly, incrementally, she raised the temperature enough that large fat snowflakes began to fall. She had to reduce the spread of her magic even more to lower the temperature enough to change the snow to frigid rain.
Rein.
If he was here they’d be done already. He would have nudged a warm front to come in and the water would have dropped from the sky in torrents. And then she would have done what she did best. Dropped the temperature so the mud puddles turned to slick ice and the snow would have fallen thick and fast. They would have been done in a matter of minutes rather than hours.
Instead she waited while the rain fell from the sky. It felt like it fell gently instead of in the rush of torrents Rein always seemed to manage. The quiet man had a love of summer storms and his magic reflected that.
Eventually rivers of mud began to flow around her and Blanche began to lower the temperature. The weather, happy to return to its normal course of action, gladly dropped below freezing, providing wet snow that quickly accumulated over the rapidly freezing mud.
Suddenly a thunderous boom shook the ground, and Blanche had to steady herself as she blinked away the dark spots that danced in her vision from a lightning strike that was much closer than people were usually comfortable with. Grinning, she turned to see Rein’s small smile and hear his whispered “Boom”. He loved thundersnow.
Blanche’s smile cracked as there was no one there to appreciate the thunderous noise and crackle of light that would have blinded and deafened anyone but a weather mage. Rein. He’d always been there. Blanche clenched her fist and carefully sealed off her heart as she turned towards the entrance to the caves. Liliane would keep her far from the icy weather if she even suspected Blanche was missing her old partner.
She didn’t miss him that way, but camaraderie was hard to come by with the Chosen. And Rein’s quiet, easy presence was something that would take a while to get used to not having. The tiniest sigh escaped her as she took one last look at her work before ducking into the cave system. As pretty as snow was, she missed rain.